Obviously, it was a case of the law taking its course and Manoranjan had indeed been found on the wrong side of the law for not having paid back the loan. But a deeper look into the wretchedness of this poor man's existence would reveal that he was not a willful defaulter; rather a mere victim of tragic circumstances which were beyond his control. The man committed the 'sin' of spending the money he had taken from Krishi Bank to buy cattlehead on his wife's treatment. It was a sin that perhaps couldn't be compared with the huge number of legally and morally untenable cases of defaulters failing to repay thousands of crores of taka taken as industrial loans. We don't object to the strict enforcement of the law; rather we endorse it, but justice must be tempered with mercy in appropriate cases. Obviously, we are talking about the poor farmers and self-employed women who have a very good record of paying back loans, despite the grinding poverty that they have to grapple with almost round the year. They certainly do not deserve to be included in the same category as the loan defaulters responsible for emptying bank coffers in the name of setting up industries.

Manoranjan's plight left a deep impression on our collective psyche as it once more raised a pertinent question: is the law unduly harsh on the poor? There is, of course, no way to encourage the default culture, but there should be some sort of social safety net for people like Manoranjan who, unfortunately, form the bulk of the population in rural Bangladesh.